PHFHG Week In Review

Highlights from our week!

We started (finally) Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. For the first genre I chose Adventure and the book The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla. Squirt was very excited. We started DITHOR on Friday and she read the first chapter in the book. She can't wait to read more next week. I plan on only doing DITHOR 2-3 times a week (as suggested in my Teaching Manual aka "Guide").

Squirt basically finished Unit 6 of Preparing Hearts for His Glory. She also completed her experiment from Unit 5. We will do the experiment and cooking project from Unit 6 next week. I hope to make two batches of the Egyptian pastries, one with wheat flour and one with my rice flour mix, that way everyone can enjoy them that day.

We've continued to enjoy reading Grandpa's Box. She's getting better with written narration, thanks to great guidance from the HOD Guide.







Tirzah has been laid aside for night-time reading with Dad. (The chapters were longer and I was having a hard time getting through it before the little boys were interrupting.) It is a great book though! Not to be missed.


Squirt did the experiment from Unit 5 which asked "How does the waxy covering of the desert cactus help it store water?" Here she is with the finished project. The cactus on the left dried out completely while the cactus in the "waxy covering"  on the right stayed moist.

She studied Robert Lewis Stevenson's poem "Summer Sun" and learned about personification this week. She wrote her own poem using that poem as a guide and created a poem about the moon with the elements of personification. It was titled "Winter Moon". (hmmm spelling to be corrected next time)

She created a crook for her History Project. (And reminded me that I need to watch that she follows directions completely. She was suppose to leave the aluminum foil top of the crook plain shiny foil, but she failed to pay attention to the directions and painted the whole thing.)

Here are samples from her Independent History Study. (If you can't read it well click on it to see it bigger.)

Sphinx

Joseph

No pictures for Science Exploration this week. More to come next week.

Little Hands Week in Review

We have completed the last day of Unit 2 and Days 1-3 of Unit 3 of Little Hands to Heaven. Buddy is really enjoying his preschool. I asked him if he wanted to include little brother, and of course he wanted his special time all to himself. So we wait to do preschool (LHTH) until Bubba is down for his nap. Buddy has just recently stopped napping, so we let our afternoons be a little bit more relaxed than before.

I just love how sweet and gentle Heart of Dakota is and how much my little guy is learning at the same time. It is just the right amount right now for him. I am letting him guide me in the speed and we are both having a lovely time.

Buddy learned the letter C and the number 3 this week. We read about the Tower of Babel and made towers and counted blocks (I forgot to take out the camera that day). We read about Abraham leaving his homeland with his family; and he and Lot parting ways and Lot choosing the best for himself. And then we learned about God's promises to Abraham.

Buddy cut out 3 suitcases for his number 3 page.

He enjoyed cutting out C-C-Cloth to put on
his letter C. And no bed-head! I gave him that haircut that is as close to a crew-cut as I could get with the scissors. ( He will not allow the shears aka "buzzers" anywhere near his head.)

My little ham! (Love that one eyebrow look.)

And He reeeeeally enjoyed driving his cars around the letter C.

PHFHG Week In Review

This week we finished up the science experiment from Unit 4 and the rest of Unit 5. We are continuing on in Rod and Staff 2 and Singapore Math 3B. We will begin Drawn Into the Heart of Reading this week.

We are continuning to read together from A Child's History of the World. (Vocabulary & Research topics have been drawn from this as well as Geography and timeline work)

We are continuing reading in Grandpa's Box.

And have begun reading Tirzah.










Below are samples from Squirt's Independent work.

She's done creative writing through poetry and written her own poem based on "A Good Play" by Robert Lewis Stevenson. She's memorized  "A Good Play" for Poetry. And I recorded a video of her saying it from memory.

She's memorized Psalm 127:3-4 using  the Lead Me to the Rock CD
And copied it into her Common Place Book.










She made three more timeline pieces. (Pictures to come)

Squirt did an experiment (completely on her own) to figure out how cactus spines help cacti to stay cooler in the desert heat. Here is her cactus.

She is reading the 5,000 Year Old Puzzle for Independent History Study. She drew a sarcophagus and pyramid. Here are samples of her work from that with Draw and Write Through History.

And her completed mammoth from a while back

And she made a cartouche for her History Project out of air dry clay and wrote Hatshepsut on it. Then she rubbed paint into the etching to make it stand out.

And finally one of her Science Exploration sheets. 

She will do the experiment from Unit 5 next week and move on to Unit 6.

LHTH Week in Review

This week we did more of  Unit 2 of LHTH with Buddy. He enjoyed working on writing the letter B and counting to five while placing blocks on his letter B.

He learned about Noah's Ark and the rainbow and enjoyed cutting color paper and making a rainbow collage. 

The Guide said to tear the paper, but I thought this would be another great time for Buddy to practice using scissors. Please ignore the terrible bed head.  (he got a haircut last night). 

Finished work of art!!

HOD PHFHG Week in Review

We had fun this week with HOD!!! I am posting the kids weeks separately since Squirt's is so long.

Squirt finished Unit 3 and almost all of Unit 4 of Preparing this week. She will do the experiment from Unit 4 on Monday, as she completed the experiment for Unit 3 this week. Here are the highlights of her week.

She made a clay Great Ice Age map complete with labeling flags, great ice walls, and painted water. We were short on playdough, so she made it flat. Then she used acrylic paint to paint the bodies of water and then added white paper to represent the ice walls. Here is her project in two stages. She took three days to complete it. 

She also did an experiment with water. She had to answer the question "Why do caterpillars and insects not freeze during the winter in the Arctic Tundra?"  She put a 1/2 tsp salt in one compartment of water and a 1/2 tsp of sugar in another. The third she left plain water. The guide said to use an ice cube tray, but we don't own any. This was my closest substitution- a mini-muffin tin. Here are pictures of what she did and her lab sheet.

She did label the tray in her picture differently than the real tray, but the labels were all there just in a different order.

Here is her work from her Classifying Living Things. The picture doesn't do it justice as the page was bigger than what my scanner could scan. The top of the page says Revelation 4:11. (I noticed I need to work on proofing her spelling and correct copying of things more in her Independent work.) I thought her drawings were lovely!

Here is her work for her Independent History Study in Draw and Write Through History.

And here is her illustration for Poetry this week.

Just one more to tack on that I didn't scan from Unit 3. Here is one of her Sceince Exploration pages from last week.

LHTH Week In Review

We had fun this week with HOD!!!

Buddy enjoyed his time in Little Hands. We are in Unit 2. We finished Days 1-3 this week. We have not done LHTH every day. But here is what Buddy did do this week.

He giggled his way through the Noah's Big Boat fingerplay. He loved making the animal sounds, especially the Bison that says "snort". 

He glued cottonballs to the letter B and then painted them with B-B- Blue and B-B-Brown. 

He also got to do his first science experiment! He loved every minute of it! He had to guess what things would float or sink. Here is his hypothesis.

Then he did the experiment.

And here was his conclusion after he placed each item in the bowl to see if it did float or sank. He chose to leave the cottonball in the sink category because, even though it floated initially, once it go water logged it sank. 

Buddy learned the letter B and worked to identify it in his Hide And Seek B page. He also learned about the number two and cut out 2 hands to place on his Number Two page for his Number Book.

HOD PHFHG Week in Review

We've had a busy but productive week last week. Buddy didn't do any formal school this week. We were busy with doctor appointments, chiropractor appointments and staying afloat in the world of life.

Squirt finished Unit 3 of Preparing Hearts for His Glory. Here are the highlights.

Squirt with her cave paintings- (mammoth and buffalo)

Buddy and his cave painting. He wouldn't stand still so I took a still picture of just the painting too. He was having a very wiggly-silly day (thus the silly face).

And Bubba joined in the school room too! He has discovered the Lauri peg board and pegs.

Squirt worked on drawing a mammoth for her Independent History Study one day.
She plans to complete the background this week. But I thought it was really good.

And finally here is Squirt's illustration of Unit 3's poem "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson